Faculty

Lawrence Root

Larry Root, Professor of Social Work and Director of the University's Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, is working with a research team exploring work and family in an a Midwestern auto plant. With the plant, "Sylvania," as the thematic center, the research explores the work environment and its relationship to the lives of workers and their families. The blue-collar workers at Sylvania have pay and benefits that rival and often surpass all but the highest paid families in their communities. Yet their sense of well-being can be shaken by uncertainty about the future of their jobs and negative societal stereotypes about blue-collar work.

Job shadowing and participant observation in the plant and at union functions have been an integral part of the research. The team has attended plant-wide meetings, union elections, and contract ratifications. Open-ended qualitative interviewing has been a key source of information. Leaders of the union and management have been interviewed as well as a random sample of salaried and hourly Sylvania workers. These interviews have been incorporated into a computerized qualitative analysis software system which is being made available to other researchers who want to work on this project. As part one approach to participant observation, Root went through new employee orientation with recent hires and then worked for 30 hours in the plant. Negotiations are underway to develop additional in-plant research approaches to study the impacts of changes underway in plant production and administration.

One of the primary goals in developing the Sylvania project was to explore the educational and career directions of the children of workers. Once these children might have imagined following in the footsteps of their parents. But this has become less of a possibility as opportunities in manufacturing continue to disappear from the U.S. economy. And the impact of these lost jobs are profoundly affecting communities that were once defined by their smokestack industries and dependent on them for a viable tax base find that they starved for revenues as their manufacturing base disappears.

For some workers, their story at Sylvania is of the American dream realized; for others, it is a dream fading away. As American manufacturing companies seek to become more competitive in a global environment, Sylvania provides a microcosm of the changes that impact workers and their families.